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Response to Junkspace

Sin and Beauty of Capitalism

Capitalism is taken as the blessing and building stone of the prosperity of the U.S., if not most parts of the world, which also casted great hardship and penalty on the society, such as the 1929 Big Depression and 2008 Recession. It is never possible to figure out whether the blessing or the crisis is bigger. Most people want to do make it better by tickling and adjustment, a few want revolutions. The topic here, putting architecture on the stage of capitalism and trying to take role of economic agency, is picking up a very important mission in a generous manner. While, when we put great endeavor to upgrade architecture’s influence on everything else, it is necessary to jump out of the discipline to rethink the share of importance as architecture in the world. Like Klingmann emphasizing how important it is to take architecture out of academia and onto the capital market, it is equally important, if not more, to set our perspective outside our very narcissism discipline, collecting and referring almost every designing procedure back to modernism even Renaissance. More often than not, we are backward-looking and appreciating discipline. In the book Brandscape, Klingmann is clapping his hands for Rem Koolhaas’ Kunthal project about taking the similar footprint of Mies van der Rohe’s Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin while how much difference it makes on the facade and material gestures. We are so into the history of architecture that every little bit of new things need to be celebrated. However, when Klingmann talked about the generic and the specific in OMA’s project, he pointed out the reciprocal relationship about these two, and moved forwards to the discussion about “the narrowing gap between commercial culture and cultural production accelerated by the experience of late capitalism”, which takes a big step outside the discipline.

Also, the commodification of architecture that takes architecture away from a self-fulfilled cultural object is one of the facts that capitalism taking over the whole world. Instead of taking a cynical stance of criticizing the capitalism that is frequently taken as a devil, which barely generates any solutions, it is a good way for architecture to cooperate with capital. As pointed out by Klingmann, the programmatic hybrids advocated by Koolhaas finds the sweet midland outside both architectural and capitalism territories while still stay in the play. Moreover, in the Junkspace by Rem Koolhaas, the modernization is taken as a big sin as the generator of junkspace, since it has a rational mission “to share the blessing of science”. In this regard, more or less, capitalism is under the criticism, since capitalism is a reciprocal factor of modernization. “Piling matter on top of matter, cemented to form a solid new whole” as one way of generating junkspace described by Koolhaas, OMA’s project bryghusgrunden in Copenhagen seems to be one of his representations of programmatic hybrids. But, I wonder how much it can distinguish itself from “piling matter on top of matter” by shifting matter, piling them off grid then having to introducing truss structure to hold the long hanging volumes. If capitalism nods its head on the scene that a young couple coming out of hotel saying hi to the dressed-up businessman next door, we should all nod along. However, if the programmatic hybrids does not breed such harmonious chemicals among the users, should we still embrace hybrids for its own sake without the support from capitalism? Sometimes, the question is very simple, is this building built for the client who is hold the capital?

Similarly, parametric design is mind-boggling with the endless variation and eye-opening with the intriguing appearance. “From producing static and discrete objects to the generation of operative patterns” draws a promising possibility for the future of architecture. While, the fundamental factors, such as environmental forces, user preferences, economical concerns and program, that constant feedback loop based on need to be casted in doubts to test its own validness and reasonability, which can go back to the primary design problem, say the proper degree of simplification of context. As criticized in the book Brandscape, “although the prototypes are interesting” as they may be customized to fit and explore brand identities, “they remain highly questionable on a practical level,” since the convincing hierarchy and particular target markets is hard to set in the computational design process due to the fact that data is processed by repetition of codes instead of the creative and deliberate judgement on behalf of the architect. Thus, a long piece of codes that sometimes even confused the writer does not necessarily work better to convince capitalism than the deterministic design of architect.

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In the twenty-first century, we must learn to look at cities not as skylines but as brandscapes and at buildings not as objects but as advertisements and destinations. In the experience economy, experience itself has become the product: we're no longer consuming objects but sensations, even lifestyles. In the new environment of brandscapes, buildings are not about where we work and live but who we imagine ourselves to be.

Anna Klingmann, Brandscapes: Architecture in the Experience Economy, 2010